So are you one of those people that always read about great offers, but the caveat is that they are targeted and you didn’t get the Golden Ticket email? Me too. Until today.

I just got an offer from AA for a no sweat-off-my-brow upgrade to Platinum status AND 20 500 mile upgrade certificates. No fly x number of miles by a certain date or spend x dollars, just “here you go”. There are a lot of other offers out there that are the more typical earn status for a reduced number of miles/ dollars. See Miles-to-Memories or The Unaccompanied Flyer. Note that in these offers, I would need to spend $2000 and fly 12,500 EQM to earn Platinum.

Although I do fly AA, I always try to credit my flights to Alaska since the status there is so much better. I did earn about 7,000 EQM last year only because I got stuck on an Iberian Air flight coming back from Morocco and AA or BA was all I could credit it to. Got plenty of hard to use BA miles, but can always use AA miles for flying my daughter around.

So I immediately signed up just in case they made an error on this gift from heaven. Sure enough, Platinum already and those upgrade certificates are supposed to post within 20 days. Kind of bizarre how they decided it was good for 3 1/2 months. I guess the incentive is supposed to be to switch your flying to AA and get hooked on it so you want to keep flying the rest of the year and keep your status?

They’ll have to offer me more than this to make me switch from Alaska. But I’ll fly and enjoy those upgrades and status while I can.